She gets up and travels a series of hallways, never showing us her face, until she arrives in a large room where someone says “Places, everyone.” This is the aerobics goddess shooting a video, clearly the master of all she surveys. Five years earlier, there’s a lot going on in Sheila’s life, much of it […]
The crowded painting’s two main characters, Captain Frans Banninck Cocq and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch, are central in the chopped down painting. The reason the 1642 group portrait of an Amsterdam civil militia was trimmed is simple: It was moved from the militia’s club house to the town hall and there it didn’t fit on […]
But on Wednesday, the artist will be speaking directly, albeit from a remote location, to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge about her situation. The exact reasons that the 39-year-old Spears is under a conservatorship have not been publicly disclosed. During the time that Spears has lived under this arrangement, though, she has released four […]
Pop star Billie Eilish is apologizing for mouthing a racist slur, responding to questions raised by an old video of her that quickly went viral on TikTok. Eilish says she is “being labeled something that I am not,” after critics said her actions were insensitive at best and racist at worst. The footage in question […]
The Demon Dog of Crime Fiction is back, and this time around it’s more boocoo bad business, crooked cops, pervs, prowlers, and putzo politicians than ever, and that’s saying a lot. An ex-cop who became a private investigator and then quickly morphed into the beating heart of Confidential magazine, Otash had Hollywood in his pocket […]
What happened when Joni Mitchell made Blue? Accounts abound of the recording sessions at the studio owned by A&M Records on North LaBrea Avenue in Hollywood in January 1971, and of the months before, when Mitchell started sharing the songs she’d lay down in that room, saying, hey, listen to this in the hours after […]
Now, two years later, Meghan and Harry have added a second child to their family — daughter Lilibet Diana was born in early June — and that poem is a children’s book. The Bench is a series of vignettes — fathers and their sons share a bench while they drink apple juice, wait for the […]
It stars Rose Byrne as a woman whose husband is running for public office in San Diego but who has aspirations of her own to produce an aerobics exercise tape for the newly emerging home video market. For one thing, her husband Danny has just been let go from his job as a college professor, […]
Beatty, who died June 13, made his film debut in Deliverance and then went on to appear in scores of movies, including Network, All the President’s Men and Superman. He earned an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in the 1976 film “Network.” In this scene, Beatty plays a TV executive reading the riot act […]
And there’s no shortage of reverence for the group from its musical descendants, too: “All pop music is rearranged Sparks,” Grammy-winning producer Jack Antonoff, who has worked with Lorde and Taylor Swift, says in the film. And yet, you say you can’t place the name? Can’t quite hear a song of theirs in your head? […]
Many plants in your supermarket produce section look different, but are actually the exact same species: Brassica oleracea. …Read the full story
By curious coincidence, two of the lovelier movies I’ve seen so far this summer — the family-friendly animated fable Luca and the German art-house fairy tale Undine — tell stories about mythic sea creatures making contact with the human world. It takes place in and around a small Italian Riviera town whose residents live in […]
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — author of such books as Americanah and Half a Yellow Sun, and a celebrated feminist who has been sampled by Beyoncé — has accused a younger writer who was once her student, Akwaeke Emezi, of being an opportunist who has tried to build on her former teacher’s fame. Earlier this month, […]
So we asked our listeners to do one other thing: Choose three “auxiliary friends,” who could be any character other than the top six who appeared even once in the show. Ross and Monica’s father wasn’t nearly as directly critical as their mother, but he could be devastating in his own ways. But from time […]
On the Monday after the release of In the Heights, its creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda posted not a congratulatory note but an apology. “I’m trying to hold space for both the incredible pride in the movie we made and be accountable for our shortcomings,” Miranda said in a statement posted on social media. It starred Latino […]
The 65-year-old Banes, who was struck by a scooter or motorcycle while crossing a street on June 4, died Monday at Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital, a police department spokesperson said. Banes appeared in numerous television shows and movies, including Gone Girl in 2014 and Cocktail with Tom Cruise in 1988. …Read the full story
Ned Beatty, a veteran character actor who worked in film, television and theater, has died at age 83. Ned Beatty was a character actor best known for his appearances in the movies “Deliverance,” “Network” and “Superman.” He died Sunday at age 83. After his dad died when he was 15, he started working as an […]
“The pulse of this musical, it feels close to me,” he says. Now Ramos is starring — and singing and dancing and rapping — in the film adaptation of In the Heights. I’m grateful that we have a movie about a neighborhood like Washington Heights where we see … Ramos had a dual role as […]
Muslims are very rarely depicted in movies, and when they are, it’s usually as a stereotypical terrorist, what Oscar nominated actor Riz Ahmed calls a “dangerous trope.” Having spoken out about this issue for several years, he’s been looking for hard data. USC’s researchers combed through 200 popular films from the U.S., the U.K., Australia […]
JONATHAN COULTON, BYLINE: From NPR and WNYC, coming to you from beautiful Brooklyn, N.Y., it’s NPR’s hour of puzzles, word games and trivia, ASK ME ANOTHER. This week, I don’t have to make it up, like I usually do, which drives our booker crazy ’cause she’s like, oh, great. Later, the amazing Grammy-winning musician Sara […]